ICANN

Forty-seven years of U.S. government authority over the Internet's most basic functions is slated to end Saturday, not with a celebration or a wake but with the quiet expiration of a contract.

The agreement essentially gives a California-based nonprofit group the sole authority to organize cyberspace's address book. And though this entity, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), has played this vital role for years, the retreat of U.S. control has sparked charges that President Barack Obama's administration is abandoning the final vestiges of a crucial - if rarely exercised - oversight position.

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